"If you want to be taken for a San Franciscan," advises a new San Francisco guidebook, "dress conservatively, cling to the outside of cable cars, and make bad jokes about Los Angeles." Though Guidebook Author Herb Caen does not mention it, another sure sign of the Compleat San Franciscan is his addiction to the San Francisco Examiner's Columnist Herb Caen.
Newsman Caen (rhymes with rain) is probably the most loyally read local columnist in the U.S., and his formula—like San Francisco—is unique. "My job," says he, "is to make the legends come true.' While 15 other local columnists in the city's four dailies have come and gone in the past two decades, Caen's lighthearted legend-doctoring has filled six newspaper columns a week since 1938, earned him the sobriquet "Mr. San Francisco." and poured over into five profitable books about the city he calls Baghdad-by-the-Bay. The latest, Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco, had sold 20,240 copies by last week, and is one of the few local guidebooks in publishing history to have made the national bestseller list.
Topic A. Caen's Baghdad is essentially a mutual admiration society whose members never tire of hearing San Francisco's praises sung. "You go ten days without writing a column about how great the city is," says Caen, "and you start getting letters saying 'you don't love us any more.' " His most popular columns in the Examiner (circ. 246,186) are the periodic panegyrics he calls "fog creeping through the bridge" pieces; in them he ranges rhapsodically from the hills (he claims there are 30) to the weather (which he says beats sex as the city's "Topic A"). He even manages to extol such dubious assets as the city's sky-high alcoholism rate and the fleas, which, according to Caen, "bite only tourists and newcomers" because the natives are "so full of garlic." At times, Garlic Lover Caen sounds as if he had distilled his high-calorie prose from the Reader's Digest's Picturesque Speech Department. Sample: "The sidewalk flower stands exuding such clouds of heavy perfume that their owners should be arrested for fragrancy."
"Babble-by-the-Bay." What saves his column from being a paean in the neck is Caen's fresh, irreverent eye and his breezy, gag-filled style. Unlike most gossip columnists, Herb Caen seldom rumples through dirty linen or tries to scoop the city desk, but concentrates instead on the San Franciscana he calls "sightems" or "babble-by-the-bay." Sample Caenanities: "Sign on a Volkswagen: Help Stamp Out Cads"; classified ad for a new home: "All-electric family kitchen, including natural-birth cabinets"; one matron to another matron: "No, she's not keeping the car any more. Just the chauffeur."